The Most Creative TTRPG Settings and Milieus

[Reynard]

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. TTRPGs are limited only by the imaginations of the writers, designers, GMs and players. And yet, so many look exactly alike and lean into the same old tropes and are just, well, boring examples of their off the shelf genres.

But not all, of course. Some games, settings and adventures really push the envelope, creatively. I am interested in hearing what games, settings and milieus in TTRPGs you personally find to be highly creative, original and fresh.

For example, I think Spire is, well, inspired from a setting perspective as well as a game perspective. It relies less on old tropes and really embraces its own private milieu. Full disclosure: I have not had a chance to play it yet but have read it and talked to folks who really like it.

 

[John Dallman]

Glorantha is very different, wonderfully strange, and has a lot of internal consistency: different people looking into its mysteries mostly come out with similar conclusions. It's a good example of a magical world where the effects of the magic have been considered thoroughly, as opposed to being spray-painted onto a faux-historical setting.

 

[overgeeked]

In the fantasy genre, the OSR blows everything else out of the water. Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland, Ultraviolet Grasslands, Acid Death Fantasy, Mork Borg, Pirate Borg (you get high and gain psychic powers by snorting dust ground from undead bones), The Stygian Library, Dolmenwood, Dungeon Crawl Classics, etc.

Blades in the Dark has a wildly odd setting.

Over the Edge has always had the most out there setting. Some weird games focus on one or two conspiracies, Over the Edge includes them all. Literally every conspiracy has a place in Over the Edge.

 

[Aldarc]

Eberron: the old D&D settings were alright, but this setting was put together so well for D&D.

Ptolus: I'm sure that @Whizbang Dustyboots can speak much better about this than I can, but I found Ptolus to be an incredibly creative setting that somehow distilled D&D into a sprawling urban campaign setting.

Glorantha (RuneQuest): Wow. Just wow. IME, the strengths of the setting are also what can make it intimidating to get into for newcomers because it is dense. Nevertheless, it is an incredibly creative setting that is basically the gold standard for bronze age mythic fantasy.

Tekumel: despite M.A.R. Barker, I found Tekumel to be incredibly imaginative take on a non-European fantasy setting with weird sci-fi elements. I still look through some of the website materials for inspiration. My biggest criticisms with the setting generally involved its tremendous lore impenetrability and the nagging question of "so what do PCs do here?"

Numenera: I have always found this to be a marvelous setting in its creative blend of science fiction and fantasy.

Symbaroum: it feels like European fantasy version of a mix between Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind as a kingdom of refugees is built on the edge of a corrupted forest inhabited by barbarian clans and protected by dangerous elves and trolls.

 

[Deset Gled]

Synnibarr. Basically the granddaddy of gonzo gaming. Also, an important example show that "creative" does not necessarily have correlation with "good".

 

[E-life Lauburu]

Glorantha is huge. The runequest system...

DCC, it's fabulous, the spirit of origins, invention, madness, no limits.

Blade Runner, whose universe is well-known but seems to offer great possibilities.

Tales from the loop. So inventive. Sad poetry.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Spire really is an incredible setting. After running a campaign of it I don't want to engage with that system again, but it's such a fun world for a game—especially if you take the game's advice and feel free to not only change, but break the setting.

Right now I'm running a campaign using the setting from the 90's game Underground, which has a lot silly (and by today's standards downright offensive) elements, but I still think it was a pretty unique blend of Marshal Law's super-powered veterans and a kind of low-tech take on cyberpunk, all through the lens of 90's anticapitalism. Like with Spire you can track the individual tropes back to other sources, but the combo is something fresh and completely weird.

 

[thullgrim]

Symbaroum, Numenera, The Olde World, Age of Sigmar/Soulebound, Coriolis all are fantastic settings the I’d love to run games in. I don’t love the systems attached to some of them though.

The two systems that have excited me the most in the last ten years have been Blades in the Dark and Genesys (even with the funky dice).

 

[rhythmsoundmotion]

Spire really is an incredible setting. After running a campaign of it I don't want to engage with that system again, but it's such a fun world for a game—especially if you take the game's advice and feel free to not only change, but break the setting.

Right now I'm running a campaign using the setting from the 90's game Underground, which has a lot silly (and by today's standards downright offensive) elements, but I still think it was a pretty unique blend of Marshal Law's super-powered veterans and a kind of low-tech take on cyberpunk, all through the lens of 90's anticapitalism. Like with Spire you can track the individual tropes back to other sources, but the combo is something fresh and completely weird.

You said Marshall Law? (The comic is strong stuff, because it was meant to be offensive.) Lovely comic though.

 

[J.Quondam]

I really like the setting of A Thousand Thousand Islands and the Reach of the Roach God campaign. It's system-neutral fantasy based on south Asian mythology and folklore. The source material, writing, and illustration all make it a wonderfully evocative and unique world, at least to my experience.